1I want you to know how great is my concern for you and those in Laodicea, even all who have not met me personally,
2that their hearts may be encouraged, being united in love and into a great wealth of confident understanding, into a real knowledge of the mystery of the God and Father and of the Christ,
3in whom all the treasures of the wisdom and the knowledge are hidden.
4Now I say this so that no one may deceive you with specious arguments.
5For although in fact I am physically absent, yet my spirit is with you, rejoicing as I observe your orderliness and the firmness of your faith in Christ.
6So then, keep on walking in the Christ, Jesus the Sovereign, just as you received Him,
7having been rooted and being built up in Him and being established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.
8Be careful that no one captures you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ.
9Because all the Fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him in bodily form,
10and you are complete in Him who is the head over all rule and authority.
11In Him you were also ‘circumcised’ by the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, not with a circumcision done by hands but with the circumcision of the Christ,
12having been buried with Him in the baptism. In Him you were also raised together through your faith in the productive power of the God who raised Him from among the dead.
13Yes you, though being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh—He has made you alive together with Him; having forgiven us all our trespasses;
14having wiped out the written record about us that was against us (based on the ordinances), indeed He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross;
15having stripped the principalities and the authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, having triumphed over them by it the cross.
16So do not let anyone judge you about food or drink, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or Sabbaths,
17which things are but a shadow of those to come, while the body is Christ's.
18Nor let anyone disqualify you, taking pleasure in a subservience and devotion to the angels, ‘taking possession’ of things that he has not seen, being puffed up by his carnal mind to no useful purpose,
19and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, supported and held together by its joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.
20Now then, since you died with Christ away from the basic principles of the world, why, as though still living in it, are you subjecting yourselves to regulations
21—Don't handle! Don't taste! Don't touch!—
22(all of which result in corruption through overuse) according to the commands and teachings of men?
23Such things do indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and subservience and asceticism, but are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.
